Under the national programme ‘Transmission and Terrestrial Television Broadcasting Digitisation by 2020’, Da Nang will officially end analogue terrestrial broadcasting on 1 November 2015 when the switchover to digital terrestrial television begins.

Many local households living below or near the city’s poverty threshold, and poor social policy and ethnic minority families, have already been provided with free-of-charge DVB-T2 set-top boxes (STBs), which decode the digital TV signals.

Watching a football match on a digital TV

However, the Viet Nam Television (VTV) Transmission Centre has not yet completed its digital broadcasting stations in the Hoa Son and Hoa Bac communes in Hoa Vang District.  As a result, over 300 families in the 2 communes have no access to digital channels on their TVs.

Following an instruction from the municipal Steering Committee on the TV digitalisation programme, these 2 digital broadcasting stations will be put into use no later than 25 October.  In addition, VTV will adjust the operation of local broadcasting equipment and antennas in order to optimise its broadcasting of digital channels, and set up more broadcasting stations in other local areas before 1 November.